The Kurzweil blog talks about intellectual privacy – the ability to think for ourselves. If our friends know what we read then the fear of being judged for the things we read and watch might stop us from being inquisitive and curious about the world we live in.

Perhaps we should share in a better way. According to Neil Richards in his paper ‘The Perils of Social Reading’ we are setting a worrying precedent for the future.

Thinking about our social sharing activities, the paper says:

Social reading takes us a step further. Not only are our friends with us when we watch movies at the cinema, but they’re now there when we watch movies on our computers, and also when we read on our computers. They never leave.

An always-on regime of “frictionless sharing” means we are always at the movies with our friends, even when we don’t want to be.

It means we’ll always watch the movie they choose, and we won’t choose the movie we want to see if they’d make fun of us for it. We might never get to see that film we’re curious but shy about.

This is the case whether our film is fluffy like “Gnomeo and Juliet,” political like “Bowling for Columbine,” racy like “Black Swan,” or something even more explicit.

If we’re always with our friends, we’re never alone, and we never get to explore ideas for ourselves. Of course, the stakes here go beyond movies, to reading, web-surfing, and even thinking.

Inadvertent disclosure of something that we might not want to share will cause us friction in making efforts to ensure that our information is not broadcast without our consent. The app is broadcasting information without our explicit consent. Is this undermining our right to privacy?

Millennials might scoff at our need to keep things private. They were born into an age of sharing everything they do with their friends.